The Geek Professor » Senators http://www.thegeekprofessor.com Making tech easy for everyone Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:11:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Privacy Advocate Teaches State a Lesson – Posts Senators’ Private Data http://www.thegeekprofessor.com/privacy-advocate-teaches-state-a-lesson-posts-senators-private-data/ http://www.thegeekprofessor.com/privacy-advocate-teaches-state-a-lesson-posts-senators-private-data/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:38:48 +0000 Jeremy http://www.thegeekprofessor.com/?p=738 A lady in Virginia draws attention to the bad data practices of the state by collecting and posting state senators' information on her website.

]]> This lady found Social Security Numbers on a state website. She’s threatened to publicly release detailed instructions on how to find them like she did and to expose the SSNs of several important people in the state if they don’t fix the problem.

A spokesman for the office responsible said:

The bulk of the “hundreds of thousands” of documents on the Web site are business filings, and only 5 percent or so are believed to include Social Security numbers

Why can’t states realize that putting records online makes them available to the world instead of just local people? There’s public information and global public information.

That aside, this lady is my hero and I hope she does post the data. I’ve often wondered how long it would take to solve some of our privacy woes if a few dozen members of congress had all their personal data posted on a website.

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